1. Field
The present invention relates to image processing, and more particularly, to an image processing method and apparatus for softly processing the image quality of a face part of an image when the image is captured.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, technologies related to detecting a subject, for example, a face, from an image obtained by using a digital camera and processing the image according to a result of detecting the subject, that is, technologies such as adjusting white balance or controlling whether to emit flash according to the brightness of the subject, have increased in use.
Meanwhile, digital camera users desire to make photos look brighter and more beautiful. Also, the users have difficulties in downloading the photos stored in digital cameras to their PCs and editing the photos using an image editing program, such as Photoshop.
In response to the users' needs, recently released digital cameras are equipped with a “beauty mode” or similar mode which makes a face in a photo look brighter. When a user photographs a person in the “beauty mode”, the user can obtain brighter and more beautiful photos, and, in particular, the skin of the face in the photos looks softer.
However, digital cameras perform the same degree of image processing on all persons recognized in images in a “beauty mode” or similar mode. In this case, when an image includes people at various distances from a photographing apparatus and auto-focusing is performed on faces at a near distance and auto-focusing is not performed on faces at a far distance, performing the same degree of image processing, for example, blurring, on all faces in the image results in at least some of the faces in the image appearing blurry. Also, an object found in the whole image to be corrected, e.g. a skin color of a face, is corrected by using a skin color as the same sized window. Thus, when a big face and a small face, for example, faces having different sizes, appear on the same image, the same degree of image processing, for example, averaging of adjacent pixels within the same sized window, is performed and may crush the small face. Furthermore, the same degree of image processing is performed for focused images and non-focused images and may blur images.